Visa close to ‘normal’ after outage blocks transactions across Europe (Update)

Visa customers took to social media to complain of issues processing transactions in Europe

Payment methods large Visa stated late Friday it was “operating at close to normal levels” after a failure left it struggling to course of transactions in Europe.

The blockage had left some prospects caught on the tills in shops across the continent and queueing at money machines.

“Visa cardholders can now use their Visa cards as we are currently operating at close to normal levels,” the corporate stated in an announcement.

“The issue was the result of a hardware failure. We have no reason to believe this was associated with any unauthorised access or malicious event.”

A spokesman instructed AFP earlier it was not potential to say what number of Visa customers across Europe had been affected.

Visa customers took to social media to complain and banks tried to clarify the scenario their prospects.

HSBC financial institution’s UK Twitter account earlier stated: “From what we understand there are still intermittent issues but services are slowly recovering.”

Paymentsense, which offers card machines, on-line fee gateways and digital terminals to some 60,000 unbiased companies in Britain and Ireland, suggested customers to strive paying by way of contactless transactions.

“We have been informed that Visa has corrected the outage and transactions are now starting to go through. There is still some intermittency however, we believe this is due to a backlog of transactions,” it stated.

“We now understand that contactless transactions have a better chance of going through.”

It is known the Bank of England is conscious of the problem and is in contact with Visa.

The Royal Bank of Scotland’s Twitter assist account stated money machine withdrawals have been unaffected.

“This is an industry wide issue which is being investigated as a matter of urgency and we apologise for any inconvenience. ATM and MasterCard transactions are not impacted,” it stated.

Queues in outlets

In a Primark retailer on Berlin’s Alexanderplatz, pissed off prospects have been queueing for 20 minutes to pay. Staff didn’t know why transactions weren’t going by way of.

However, within the neighbouring retailer, transactions have been being processed with none issues.

Sandra Foy, who owns a bookshop in Manchester, northwest England, instructed Sky News tv: “I run a small enterprise and the lack of any enterprise is an enormous deal for us.

“Not knowing when this is going to be sorted out is incredibly frustrating.”

The BBC posted an image of a London grocery store employee standing outdoors holding an indication studying: “cash only”.

It cited Elle Gibbs-Murray, from Bridgend in south Wales, as saying she was caught in visitors on the Severn Bridge between England and Wales for 45 minutes as drivers have been unable to pay the toll by card.

Alex Neill, Which? client journal’s managing director of residence services and products, stated: “Clearly this situation can be an enormous inconvenience to prospects and it have to be resolved urgently. Visa and the banks want to guarantee no-one is omitted of pocket due to this outage.

“We strongly advise people to keep any evidence of extra expenses they’ve incurred in order to claim them back.”